Commons Cartridge Viewer: We invented it!

Well, more specifically, our brilliant engineers invented a thing! Why? Because you asked us for it!

You asked for a way to see the contents of the resources that are shared in Commons before importing it into Canvas. We wanted to give that to you, but those Commons resources are stored as “Common Cartridge” files and a web-based “Common Cartridge Viewer” isn’t a thing that existed in the world. Our industrious engineers worked very hard to find a solution that would allow us to crack open those cartridges and show you their contents. And they did it! Seriously. They invented a way to extract and then preview common cartridge files in the browser. That means we will be able to show you a preview of assignments, pages, discussions, quizzes, modules and courses in Commons.

You can try out the Preview technology here, using our stand alone Common Cartridge Viewer. There are a few cartridge examples there for you to test, or you can export a course from Canvas and drag it onto the browser. The Common Cartridge viewer is open source and you can check it out on github.

Our next release to production (January 5, 2019) will include a feature option for Commons Previews on the Commons Admin page. Because we invented this thing (did I mention that yet?), we wanted to take a little time to collect feedback on the Previews before turning the feature on for everyone in March 2019. We’ve set up a User Group where we’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and any issues that you find with the Previews.

The viewer nicely displays the organization section of my thin common cartridge's manifest. Will there be future support for the resources section of the thin common cartridge as well? I would love to have the viewer recognize my supplementary materials and associated standards that also exist in my cartridge files.